Review of Senpai is an Otokonoko

I want to preface this review by saying that Senpai wa Otokonoko is one of my favorite manga of all time. I am writing this review from a fan of the source material's perspective. With this being said, I did enjoy watching this anime; however, it left much to be desired. While not a standalone bad watch by any means, I don't believe it to be a very good adaptation of the source material. TL;DR: really, really great series, but pretty lackluster execution in this adaptation. My complaints lie within two key points: visuals and pacing. Let's talk about the visuals first. I believe the characterdesigns were adapted well into the animation, and everyone looks very cute, but regarding "animation", there isn't very much of that to begin with. At many points it felt like I was just rereading the manga but with sounds and voice acting. Most of the actual animated sections were drawn in a sort of simple chibi style that Pom-sensei uses throughout the manga, and I found it to be quite endearing and enjoyable especially for comedic moments in the manga, but quite overused and distracting here in the anime. They especially take away from some of the more serious moments where Pom tends to refrain from using them, but are used very liberally in the anime. A lot of the rest of the scenes are depicted via slideshow montages of still images or otherwise very minimal animation. On top of this, many background characters are drawn without eyes, which I do understand as a way to make the backgrounds easier to draw, but the fact that they often remain eyeless even when attention is drawn to them is very off-putting. All this aside though, in general, none of the standalone visuals look bad at all, and Pom's lovely art style was adapted very nicely. Unfortunately, it's clear the show wasn't given a very high budget, and it definitely reflects in how it's presented visually.

Now, pacing. This 12 episode anime covers around 75% of the manga, which is 100 chapters long. This makes for a lot of things to be gone through too fast, or just plain skipped over in some cases. I imagine that as an anime viewer unfamiliar with the source material, this wouldn't be as much as of an issue; however, from a manga reader's perspective, it personally felt very weird to watch sometimes. Some important arcs in the manga felt very rushed through here, and some less important ones felt like they were given too much attention, which left me very confused sometimes. At no point during watching this did I have any idea where they were gonna end it off. And again, this is only really an issue from a manga reader's perspective, so take this paragraph with a grain of salt.

Now, as I am a big fan of Senpai wa Otokonoko as a manga, I have to talk about some of the positives of this anime adaptation. As I mentioned before, the character designs and Pom's art style were adapted into the anime very nicely. Along with that, all of the voice casting for this adaptation fits each character super well; they're all almost exactly how I imagined them sounding in my head when I was reading. The voice acting isn't all that's good in regards to sound either; The opening and ending and all the OST in between are very good and help tie scenes together very nicely. I'm also very grateful that much of the LGBTQ+ theming was given the attention it deserves, as it's very important to the series as a whole and a big reason why I personally fell in love with it.

To conclude, I will answer the main big burning question: do I recommend this anime, or do I not? The answer is it depends. I do not want to deter anyone from experiencing a series as beautiful and lovely as Senpai wa Otokonoko. If you're not someone who reads any manga at all, then I won't discourage you from watching the anime; by all means, go ahead! As mentioned above, if you're not a fan of the source material, much of the things I mentioned will not sour the experience for you. However, if you're someone who does read manga and happened to stumble upon this anime, I would definitely suggest trying to read the manga first instead. Overall, yes, I do recommend Senpai wa Otokonoko wholeheartedly. There is just simply, in my opinion, a much better way to experience it than via this anime adaptation.